Saudi Arabia and the Upcoming Secret Nuclear War

by Gordon Duff, VT Sr. Editor, with New Eastern Outlook, Russia

First published February 15, 2019

With Israel issuing direct threats against both Syria and Iran of thermonuclear devastation if either nation retaliates against Israeli bombing attacks, the world moves closer to the brink. Many factors, including and especially Israel’s internal political collapse, are pushing the world toward a wider conflict. American political instability makes things even worse.

What has been ignored is the level of threat Saudi Arabia represents, a politically primitive nation with a massive defense budget and some very dark secrets, some of which will be revealed here.

Too many in the world believe that “cooler heads will prevail,” perhaps like they did in August 1914? The point is simple, what the public knows, what the public believes, about the nature of nuclear weapons, who has them, how many are out there, and how political and military leaders almost continually advocate their secret use, is fantasy.

The truth is out there, but real whistle blowers seldom live to tell the tale. Some do, and I know them.

You see, most nations have secret organizations, usually military commands, that investigate not only nuclear proliferation but monitor the use of nuclear explosives. Old design nukes only burned a bit of their cores, leaving the rest as fallout. New ones are clean, no leftover radiation at all, cheap to build, simple in design and any nation that wants nuclear weapons can have them and, according to sources, many do.

To begin with, let’s talk about Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has a larger military budget than Russia, but Russia spends much of their budget on a huge standing army, a significant navy, dozens of nuclear submarines and a massive thermonuclear missile capability supported by an equally huge stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia spends more than Russia but has a small navy, a very small standing army, mostly foreign mercenaries or troops “hired” from “allies.” Their budget makes no sense unless you examine it carefully. Saudi Arabia spends up to 40% of its military budget on nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

This is why they are caught lying so often when claims are made about how many weapons they buy each year from Britain and the US. The real delivered numbers are miniscule and Saudi Arabia depends on American bombs, American refueling and even Israeli planes in their war on Yemen.

This is from CNN, October 13, 2018, and figures from Britain are skewed even more:

“Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump says he doesn’t want a $110 billion arms deal he brokered with Saudi Arabia to unravel over allegations the Gulf kingdom murdered a journalist at its consulate in Turkey.

But his comments are missing the mark on a key fact: Saudi Arabia has so far only followed through on $14.5 billion in purchases.

The deal brokered last year between the US and Saudi Arabia was merely a memorandum of intent to fulfill nearly $110 billion in arms sales over the next 10 years. As of yet, Saudi Arabia has only signed letters of offer and acceptance — official purchase agreements that have either already been approved by Congress or in the process of being approved — for $14.5 billion in purchases, according to a Pentagon official.”

I debriefed a UN source, a weapons inspector with highest clearances, that led an official investigation into Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program. Because of corruption at every level of media and information, governmental, the internet, even intelligence reports that sometimes trickle down, this information, though known to all in power, is not public. Here is what we know:

• Saudi Arabia began acquiring uranium processing equipment from Germany, high speed centrifuges to produce uranium 235 at weapons grade during the 1970s.
• Saudi Arabia bought its first nuclear weapon from China in the early 1980s. Their first weapon, according to the sources was a 22-kiloton gun type uranium bomb. China then supplied the Saudi’s with an unspecified number, less than 10, smaller weapons that could be deployed on missiles. From Wikipedia:

“In 1987, Saudi Arabia purchased Chinese-made CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles designed and used by the Chinese as a nuclear-armed missile, but reportedly sold to Saudi Arabia with conventional high-explosive warheads. However their low circular error probable accuracy (1–1.5 km) makes them unsuitable for effective military use against military targets when carrying a conventional warhead. The CSS-2 has a range of 4,850 km with a payload of either 2,150 or 2,500 kg. These missiles were delivered with between 50 and 35 transporter erector launcher trucks. These missiles were the first weapons of the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force, a separate branch of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces. In 2013 the existence of the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force was officially announced.

Newsweek quoted an anonymous source in 2014 that Saudi Arabia had acquired CSS-5 intermediate-range ballistic missiles from China in 2007 with “Washington’s quiet approval on the condition that CIA technical experts could verify they were not designed to carry nuclear warheads”. The Center for Strategic and International Studies lists the CSS-5 as being capable of carrying either 250-kiloton or 500-kiloton nuclear or various types of conventional high-explosive warheads. The CSS-5, while it has a comparatively shorter range (2,800 km) and half the payload (1 ton) of the CSS-2, is solid-fueled, thus can be set up and placed on alert status more easily than the liquid-fueled CSS-2, and its accuracy is much greater (circular error probable of 30 meters).”

• The next supplier was Israel. That nation had been working with South Africa and, between 1975 when those nations signed a secret nuclear accord, and September 22, 1979, when the first South African nuclear device, a 13.2 kiloton (80ms “double-flash”) was exploded on a barge adjacent to Prince Edward Island, several hundred miles south of Cape Town. That technology, developed at the Armscor at Pelandaba, has long been known publicly. That British companies backed the process and that Saudi Arabia aided in financing is not publicly known.

However, what is spoken of today, straying miles from the truth, is a disinformation campaign that tries to erase history. From Strategic Culture, a site the FBI says is financed by a foreign spy agency, we read the following:

“The Israeli government has begun selling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia information on how to develop nuclear weapons, according to a senior official at the Israeli military organization iHLS (Israel’s Homeland Security). Ami Dor-on, a senior nuclear commentator at the organization — which is partially funded by U.S. weapons-giant Raytheon – came forward because of his concern over the emerging nuclear arms race in the region. The cooperation between the two countries in helping the Saudis to develop a nuclear weapons program is just the latest sign of their warming relationship, with Israel recently calling the Saudi crown prince ‘a partner of Israel.’”

Though “packaged” as a revelation, in fact the information which seems to damn both Israel and Saudi Arabia, in fact covers for 40 years of cooperation in nuclear weapons research and production.

Saudi Arabia’s next foray into nuclear partnership touches on Pakistan. Since 1979, Pakistan has deployed troops in Saudi Arabia, ostensibly to defend that nation, remember, a nation with a military budget larger than Russia, from Iran.

By 1982, a protocol was signed and forces, number officially up to 20,000, have been deployed in Saudi Arabia. According to our sources, among them, in most recent years, have been highly trained specialists to secure a Pakistani nuclear arsenal including nuclear tipped missiles, deployed inside Saudi Arabia, “rented” as it were, as a deterrent against Iran.

Saudi Arabia has long conspired against Iran along with Israel yet, quite obviously, it is Saudi Arabia that would suffer the brunt of Iranian retaliation were a secret nuclear attack on Iran to be staged from Saudi Arabia or using Saudi airspace.

Were one to delve further into the intricacies of geopolitics, India’s political alliances, their dance between Russia and the US, and the secret military cooperation agreements between Israel and both India and Pakistan, something I discussed during an interview with then ISI Director Ahmad Shurja Pasha in 2011, weigh heavily on Saudi Arabia’s security concerns.

Suffice it to say, though there is no public discussion of Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program other than those indicating it has gone on for decades and is, perhaps, the most unsuccessful such endeavor in planetary history, a very real arsenal exists and, according to highly knowledgeable sources, the Kingdom has deployed nuclear weapons against Yemen on several occasions.

A source at the IAEA claims, backed by a 2006 secret report from Global Security, that the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, blamed on an Iranian backed Saudi faction, was, in fact, a nuclear explosion.

The report quotes the Defense Special Weapons Agency, established on 29 January 1947 by the Atomic Energy Commission under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (Public Law 585, 79th Congress) to oversee and investigate the use of nuclear weapons and their impact on the security of the United States.

The conclusion of the report, redacted from public view, concluded that the Khobar Towers were destroyed by a tactical nuclear munition equaling 100 tons of TNT.

A similar IAEA report confirmed that finding, citing a blast crater and thermal damage only possible during a nuclear event. From that report:

“On June 25, 1996, Saudi terrorists sponsored by Iran attacked the Khobar Towers barracks, a high-rise building complex in a densely populated urban environment in Saudi Arabia. The tanker truck loaded with at least 5000 pounds of plastic explosives was driven into the parking lot in front of the Khobar Towers residential complex in Dhahran.

Nineteen American service members were killed in the blast, and hundreds of other service members and Saudis were injured.

There is no doubt that the extent of casualties in the Khobar Towers resulted, in part, from the extraordinary size of the terrorist bomb that contained the equivalent of 3000 to 8000 pounds of TNT, but a study by the Defense Special Weapons Agency concluded that the power of the bomb was actually closer to 20,000 pounds of TNT, (100 tons).”

The real conclusion of the report was, in fact, that Saudi Arabia had staged the attack themselves in an attempt to push the US into a war with Iran.

A very similar report was issued by the same agency, working with the IAEA and US Department of Energy, in 2003, offering their theory as to the events of 9/11. That report remains classified.

Putting much of the background together, moving forward the public record on modern nuclear weapons and their secret deployment was the publication of The History of Nuclear Weapons Design 1945 -2016, published by VT. From that report, written by particle physicist and former IAEA inspector, Jeff Smith with Ian Greenhalgh:

“In the minds of most people, a nuclear weapon is a large device carried on the tip of an ICBM or carried in the belly of a huge bomber aircraft that when deployed produces a colossal explosion and spectacular mushroom cloud just like all those terrifying 1950s newsreels.

However, this is no longer the case – nuclear weapon design is several generations in advance of the bulky devices of the Cold War and today, a wide variety of types of nuclear weapon exist and they come in all sizes from the smallest ‘micro nukes’ with yields measuring in hundreds of tonnes of TNT equivalent up to truly monstrous two and three stage bombs with yields of many millions of tonnes of TNT (megatonnes).

The megatonne class bombs have never been deployed in anger; if they had, there would be no possible way to keep it a secret – the devastation and fallout would be on such a grand scale as to be impossible to hide. However, the sub-kilotonne mini and micro nukes have been used many times, both in false flag ‘terrorist’ attacks like 9-11 and OK City and in military conflicts in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

The small yield and limited destruction of these mini and micro nukes means it is possible to keep their use secret; especially when the media are compliant and willfully ignore any and all instances of their use. The willingness of several players to use these diabolical weapons should send a chill down the spine of every sensible person – we are living in a new nuclear age far more dangerous and deadly than the previous Cold War era with its balance of nuclear power held in check by the terrifying concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Now that advanced nuclear weapons have become part of the playbook of modern conflict it becomes important to understand something about these weapons; to learn about their characteristics and effects so that it becomes ever harder to keep their use secret.”

The report goes further, not only into specifics of design, miniaturization and the history of weapons development but into a policy of “use and denial.”

“In the newest 5th generation devices the uranium or plutonium fissile content has been drastically reduced by as much as 90% only leaving enough fissile material needed to ignite and trigger the internal fission-fusion-fission reaction of the deuterium boost gas. In this process, almost all of the fissile material is totally consumed, producing almost no detectable traces of fallout, as compared to the older designs from the WW2 era.

These newer 5th generation weapon designs are the anarchist “21st century” favorite toys of mass destruction. By covertly hiding their existence away from the general public and secretly using them in stealthy nuclear-based guerrilla warfare attacks on undesirable persons, governments or countries — such as the Saudi’s use of a small tactical nuke on Yemen — with these new weapons of “very small” mass destruction, no non-nuclear possessing government can properly defend itself from this form of covert state-sponsored nuclear warfare.”

As we see, the “nuclear genii” has long been out of the bottle, known to all but those dependent on the fake public narrative, the “facts” allowed, fed to a public long deemed to have no “right to the truth.”

By and large, when the public evaluates, using such tools as it is allowed, the actions of leader, of policies followed, all soaked in spin and rhetoric, it does so with both hands tied behind its back.

Saudi Arabia’s nuclear story, one only touched on here, is one story. There are many, Brazil, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, so many more stories, so much fakery hidden behind the classified reports of agencies no one has heard of.

Thus, when the princelings of the Saudi kingdom order killings, fund terrorism and threaten their neighbors, they do so with a nuclear capability, enabled by those who lie for them, those who armed them, those who keep their secrets.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of  VT, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
https://journal-neo.org/2019/02/15/saudi-arabia-and-the-upcoming-secret-nuclear-war/

https://veteranstoday.com/2019/01/26/cia-expert-saudi-has-nukes-building-icbms/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/why-did-saudi-arabia-buy-chinese-missiles/

Gordon Duff

Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.

Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.

Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.

• Gordon’s Archives:  2008-2015
• Gordon’s Archives:  2016-2022